Mother Nature Gives It Up in a Big Way at Lake George, CO!

Half Of The Second Day Crystal Find!!!

Finally, a pocket to be reckoned with and a decade worth of effort really pays off!  While I found a nice looking pegmatite and a minor pocket, my digging partner Bob found the mother-load pocket of smokies!  Rather than write several posts on the same pegmatite I combined 5 trips to Lake George into 1 post. We’ve tracked a pegmatite from beginning to end and believe the same pegmatite has produced 6 pockets of crystals. It’s going to be hard digging out softball-size pockets after we dug up some of these monster smokies out of a 5 foot pocket--mostly from one large lenticular vug.  I was digging some distance from Bob after finding a few small smokies and fluorites so I called Bob over for the fun.  Bob watched for a while and he tried a spot along the pegmatite and found many pieces of smoky quartz but nothing to brag on.  Next day he tried again a little further down the hill and he hit the jackpot turning up a lot of bragging material. Smokies, fluorites and some pseudomorphs of goethite after carbonates were the highlights.  On day 1 of the “Needle Quartz” pocket Bob found a large light purple 4” penetrating twinned fluorite.  On day 2 I spelled Bob a bit in his pocket and pulled out some monster needle-like smokies! Day 3 was primarily a fluorite day and digging out a rather large sidecar pocket.  Day 4 Bob removed some sidewall, scrapped out the bottom and thoroughly inspected every nook and cranny of the pegmatite along with extensive remediation.  Upon completion of the remediation Bob found yet another pocket on the same pegmatite just up the hill, though smaller and somewhat less exhilarating.

1st Crystal Plate Of The Pocket (Some reassembly required)

Day 1--The Discovery: Bob found the pocket about the middle of the day. I was working a pegmatite further down the hill and was finding a few smokies and amazonites along a seam, but nothing like what Bob was finding.  I packed up my equipment after he came over and showed me a 5” smoky he had found and I watched as Bob pulled out smoky after smoky.  Bob found a few 6+ inch smokies, but the find of the day was a large penetrating twin fluorite. 

At first I thought it was a smoky shard but then Bob carefully unearthed a corner of the specimen and we were sure it was a fluorite.  Fortunately Bob had found a couple small fluorites before this one so he was being very careful.  Fluorite is a rather soft mineral and seemingly breaks if you look at it sideways.

Fluorite Coming To Light

After scratching around the perimeter of the fluorite he pulled out the crystal and after a little field cleaning we determined it has a slight purple hue. Bob continued the dig and pulled out several more fluorites along with a few smokies.  The weather started to deteriorate fairly rapidly and Bob started packing up crystals frantically as lightning began to flicker across the sky and hail began to fall.  I helped Bob pack up as the hail got to about nickel-size. When we got back to the truck I asked Bob how much of the pocket was left and he thought he probably had at least 50% more to go {more like 80% :-) }.

Fresh Out Of The Pocket and Field Cleaned

Day 2—A Smoky Quartz Dream: While I don’t like to dig on Saturdays I decided we better go back to the dig the following day as we had seen some folks encroaching on other people’s claims in the area but they left rather quickly when we warned them off. We got back to Bob’s dig and I helped Bob muck out the hole as the rain the previous day had taken down some of the sidewall around the dig. After mucking out the hole Bob picked up where he left off the day before.  Soon quartz crystal groups were rolling down from near the pocket ceiling—one after the next!  Many of the plates had some minor damage associated with the long ago pocket implosion but they were still very impressive.  Bob worked the site for about 2 hours til he started getting some muscle cramps and asked me to pinch hit for a while.  I had been watching Bob dig and went right for what I perceived to be the hot spot.  Sure enough crystal plates, single smokies and occasional fluorites were spilling into my hands.

Sure Was Fun!!!

I worked for about an hour and told Bob he would have to tag me out as I was having way too much fun. The smoky quartz crystals were fairly unique having a height to width ratio of about 10:1, usually the crystals have more girth than that closer to 4:1 ratio height to width--hence the Needle Pocket. As I kept pulling out long needle-like smokies Bob started setting aside a number of crystals for me to take home. There were quartz crystals in the walls, ceiling and bottom of the pocket. It seemed that every time I worked to get out a crystal two or three more were wedged around the object of interest. While some of the crystals were laying down, most of them were ceiling crystals that went straight down into the pocket material and were fairly easy to extract. Bob decided he was ready to go back in after he got rehydrated and tagged me out and pulled out more crystals for about another hour.  Bob asked me to help finish the pocket and get out what we thought was a large crystal.  Well the crystal we thought was a monster was just a large shard, but in the process of removing the shard I pulled out a beast of a smoky!  After pulling that one out and after a few more 6 inchers Bob got back in the hole again one more time and dug as long as he could. We thought the pocket was nearly done but as we’ve been taught before, when you think you’re done, redig out the bottom and sides to make sure nothing is still hiding. I dug out the bottom of the pocket while Bob loaded crystals and took three trips back to my truck with his backpack jammed full. Bob probably took close to 60lbs of crystals back to the truck on each one of his trips.  As I checked the bottom of the pocket I found a void and sure enough it too was loaded with crystals.  I pulled out even more 5-6 inch crystals and even a few more fluorites. It seemed I was pulling crystals out of that side pocket almost as fast as Bob was carrying them to the truck! Finally we decided to call it a day as the main part of the pocket appeared played out.  There was still a lot of quartz in one of the side walls and I believed a few more crystals were still lurking at the bottom of the pocket, but a lot of digging needed to be done to make the dig safe as we were down about 6 feet and the sidewalls were somewhat unstable.  Big thanks to Bob for letting me help dig out some world-class crystals this day and for letting me keep a few as well!

Day 3—Fluorite Again: Today was fluorite day. Bob mucked out the large pocket and redug the area he had started. When he got to the bottom of the dig he started removing what he had initially thought was the bottom of the pocket, but while flipping over a couple rocks numerous fluorites appeared. 

Here Is A 6" Plate With Several Fluorites On It

Most of the fluorites were attached to the bottom sides of the rocks and did not have the crisp edges we hope for but were still very collectible specimens.

Pseudomorphs on Smoky

Bob carefully cleaned out the fluorites and then sent me back into the hole to continue working the bottom of the pocket up the hill.  He started to pack crystals and made another 3 trips back to his vehicle overloaded with gems. As I dug we were soon awash in pseudomorphs of goethite after carbonates.  Not sure what the carbonate is, but siderite and calcite have been mentioned as the most likely replaced minerals. Goethite doesn’t have a rhombic habit and since the rhombs are composed of goethite they have to be pseudomorphs.  While calcite has been found in the Lake George area siderite has not been found to my knowledge, still I will refer to these pseudomorphs as goethite after siderite since this is the local/common convention. Some of the pseudomorphs were attached to fluorite, some to smokies and others just formed large plates attached to the pegmatite. Day 3 ended a little later than we normally like to dig but the weather was fair and the crystals were numerous. We decided to take a couple days off which I took advantage of by cleaning a few specimens.

Part Of The Cleaning Process I Go Through To Include Everything From Soap And Water To A Little Mechanical Cleaning

Day 4—Finishing Up The Big Dig.  The plan today was to primarily go through the tailings to make sure we didn’t miss anything, recheck the bottom of the pocket and then move forward along the quartz streamer leading up the hill out of the pocket. After digging through the tailings we found some nice quartz shards and a few small crystals which had eluded us the first time.  Small pieces of crystals and shards can be key when fitting plates or repairing crystals for display.  After a couple of hours of digging through the shards Bob returned to digging out the bottom. While a few crystals were found this time nothing of note popped up. I decided to go further down the hill and test my luck on a different pegmatite I had found the previous week.  Bob remediated the site and then began digging up hill.  Wouldn’t you know it another pocket showed itself.  This was a minor pocket compared to what he had previously found but still had plenty of action with smoky quartz crystals up to 3 inches, along with a few plates of smoky quartz crystals.  By days end Bob had remediated the dig area and came over to watch me dig out some feeble looking amazonite and smokies from a small/normal pocket I found.  So yeah, I found some stuff too. Towards the end of day 4 we ventured forth to another area... who knows what might be lurking under the next set of boulders? In a couple of weeks we should have a number of these beauties cleaned and I'll post a few. What were the happy crystal totals?  A conservative estimate would be 1500 smoky quartz crystals, 200 fluorites and numerous pseudomorphs along with plates of all of the above--and two tired but happy prospectors!

Some cleaned crystals:

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